by Zan Romanoff
“Great!”
Now there’s nothing to do but brush themselves off and follow her.
Kiley looks at the phone still in Lulu’s hand. “Is it true that you have, like, five thousand Flash followers?” she asks.
Lulu says, “Whoa. Um. Yeah.”
She doesn’t know how to feel about that number. It’s sort of a lot, and sort of not, really. It’s not like anyone’s offering her sponsored content deals or auditions for television shows on the strength of it, anyway. She’s definitely not a Kardashian, or some famous heiress or Instagram model. Mostly it’s just that Owen’s dad is famous, like seriously famous, like eventually-definitely-gonna-be-in-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame famous, and so people care about Owen, and then, for a while, people cared about her.
And then there was that other thing.
As if on cue, Kiley says, “You always do such cool stuff. It’s not surprising. I didn’t see the one with Sloane—”
“We’ve gotten some pretty good stuff here tonight,” Bea says, cutting her off. “With the, um, we were posing with some of the art. I think maybe this is Lu’s finest work yet.”
Lulu shoots her a death glare, and Bea smiles sweetly.
“Sorry,” Kiley says. “Am I asking too many questions? Am I too drunk?” She leans in conspiratorially. “I’m still figuring out getting—ummm—drinking—how to get drunk right.”
“You’re fine,” Bea says. She puts a hand on Kiley’s arm. Lulu wishes she were less annoyed by that. The part of her that can’t bring herself to be rude to Kiley wants Bea to do it for her. “How do you know Isabel?”
Kiley opens a door that leads into a much more normal-looking bedroom. “From, uh, we used to go to the same ballet studio,” she says. “When I did ballet. Oh, look, there’s the vodka.”
Bea and Lulu are still in the hallway. Bea knocks her shoulder against Lulu’s. “Whatever,” she murmurs. “She’s a baby.”
It doesn’t matter if Kiley is cool or not, Lulu thinks. She’s really just very pretty, and she doesn’t have a history with anyone here, which means she has what Lulu wants: the ability to get drunk unself-consciously, and meet someone new, and feel like she belongs places. To be excited, and exciting.
The stuff they’re drinking downstairs is cheap shit—Romanoff or something—but a bottle of Grey Goose is sitting on Isabel’s desk with a Post-it next to it, a smiling face drawn in Sharpie. Kiley dumps her cup in the sink of the en suite bathroom; as Bea and Lulu walk into the room, she returns with it empty, and fills it back up. She grimaces when she takes a sip of straight vodka. “Ugh,” she says. “Blech.”
Lulu gives Bea her cup to deal with and wanders around, pretending to be casual. It’s easy to find what she’s looking for, though: A stack of Lowell yearbooks is crammed onto the bottom shelf of Isabel’s bookcase. She recognizes Cass right away. Cassandra Velloro, third from last in the junior class, looks as flat and uncomfortable as every other kid in the surrounding pictures. Lulu tried to find Cass online, but it was hard without a last name. This will definitely help.
Bea peers over Lulu’s shoulder. Lulu flips the page quickly, so she can pretend she’s just skimming.
“Looking for your next boyfriend?” Bea asks.
Lulu shrugs and snaps the book shut. From the corner of her eye she sees Kiley’s head tilt minutely toward them. She’ll do whatever she wants to with Owen, Lulu knows—an older girl with some social seniority just isn’t enough to deter you when a cute older boy is dangling himself in front of you. But if Lulu is moving on, that gives Kiley permission to go after Owen without worrying what it looks like.
“I wanted to see if Patrick’s hair looked as dumb as I remember when he was trying to do that faux-hawk thing,” Lulu says.
Bea rolls her eyes. “God,” she says. “That was the worst.”
* * *
No wonder she was hard to find. Cassandra Velloro doesn’t have a Facebook profile, an Instagram, a Tumblr, or a Twitter. Lulu almost doesn’t bother searching Flash—why would someone who’s so obviously opposed to social media make an exception?
But then, the whole thing about Flash is that it’s there and then gone again—videos disappear a day after you post them, and there’s a private messaging system too. She thinks that Flash actually might appeal to Cass, whose favorite place in Los Angeles is a spot where no one can hear or see her. Plus, she’s BFFs with the founder’s brother.
And, in fact, there she is. Lulu follows her.
A few minutes later, Cass follows her back.
* * *
Lulu and Bea did Grey Goose shots in Isabel’s room, and they went to Lulu’s head too fast. Now she’s in the middle of the kind of expansive, tipsy feeling that makes everything in the world seem like a good idea. Lulu sends Cass a picture of herself standing still, surrounded by her friends dancing. I keep expecting someone to show up and rescue me, it says.
In the seconds after the message goes she feels incredibly, supremely dumb. She shouldn’t have gotten so fancy about it, all #aesthetic and stupid. Simpler would have been better. She should have just—
Cass breaks every messaging protocol Lulu has ever known and chats her back right away. I was just thinking about heading to The Hotel, she says. The picture shows her sitting in a room so dark that her body is mostly just a shadow on the screen.
And then: Come with?
Lulu slips out of the room before anyone can see her typing and ask who she’s talking to. She finds a couch to sit on and writes back
I’m in Brentwood
I don’t have my car here
I’ll pick you up
You sure?
I’m coming from Silver Lake.
Technically, all of this is out of my way.
Silver Lake. That makes sense, Lulu thinks, or she thinks it makes sense—she doesn’t know Cass or the neighborhood very well at all.
If you don’t mind, she says, and sends Cass a pin of the house’s location.
She’s concentrating so hard on not making any typos that she doesn’t notice Owen coming to sit down next to her.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi.”
“Are you causing trouble?” he asks, gesturing at her phone.
Lulu blanches.
Owen catches himself. “That’s not—you know that’s not what I meant,” he says.
It probably wasn’t, really. That stupid Sloane Flash. Lulu hates that she can’t think of it without feeling two distinct, unbearable sensations: the warm, thrilled moment of taking it, and the sharp, hot shame when she realized who she’d sent it to.
“Sorry,” Owen says.
They’re definitely not going to talk about this now. Or ever, hopefully, but especially not now, on a night when Owen has some new girl hanging around, on which Lulu is drunk, on which Lulu is leaving, anyway, so—
“I’m heading out in a bit, I think,” she says.
“Is it because of me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, O.”
“Sorry,” he says again. He means it. This is the problem with Owen, the reason she can’t—that no one can—stay mad at him for too long.
“I know you are.”
A cry goes up from another room, and Lulu hears the distinctive rumble of Jules bellowing “Party fouuuuul!”
“How can you leave such a super-cool party?” Owen asks. “So sophisticated. So mature.”
“I know, right?”
Quiet falls between them. Lulu holds herself very still to keep from doing what she wants to do instinctively, which is lean her head against his shoulder. Her body is so convinced that it knows how to be with him.
“Are you just going home?” Owen asks.
“No.” Lulu doesn’t want to tell him about Cass, but she wants him to know that he’s not the only thing going on in her life anymore.
“Found a cooler scene?”
“Wasn’t hard to do.” Lulu smirks.
Owen laughs at her.
Lulu laughs at herself.
“I know I can’t, but I sort of wish I could go with you,” Owen says.
Impulsively, Lulu asks: “Why can’t you?”
“Oh,” Owen says. “I mean, I guess I figured you wouldn’t want me to.”
Lulu wants to ask about Kiley and can’t.
“It would be pretty weird,” she says. She can’t quite picture Owen—solid, comfortable, easygoing Owen—in the dark, strange space of The Hotel.
But it would also be a place she could show him. That the two of them could have together. One last secret, even if they aren’t going to be together like that anymore.
One more thing no Kiley can ever take from her.
“I should be getting back,” Owen says.
“You can,” Lulu agrees. “You should. But you can also come with me if you want.”
CHAPTER SIX
IF CASS IS pissed about Lulu inviting someone to join them, she doesn’t act like it. Lulu figures she’s relieved, probably. This way there’s no third-wheeling worries: just two girls, two boys, an abandoned building, and the night. Exactly the way it’s supposed to be.
Right?
The Hotel seems darker than it did last time. The fairy lights strung through the trees along the entryway aren’t on, and the moon is waning, turning thin in the sky. Owen makes a joke about being a kidnapping victim and Cass laughs politely.
“Lulu made it out okay,” she says.
“Lulu was the bait,” Owen says, straight-faced. “I’m the real prize.”
Cass throws a look over her shoulder at him in the back seat. For just an instant she’s razor sharp, as if a mask has fallen away, leaving the slice of her judgment raking over him. “No you’re not,” she says. And then, just as fast, she’s smiling again. “I mean, I hear Lulu’s the one with five thousand Flash followers.”
“That does seem to be the fact of the day,” Lulu says. “Also, currently, five thousand and one.”
Since last time they were here someone has spray-painted actual lines for parking spaces directly in front of The Hotel, which makes it feel less magical. Lulu is pleased that Cass pointedly ignores them, pulling her car in so that it straddles two spots. The same black Range Rover, presumably Ryan’s, is parked sideways to take up the remaining three. “Full for the night,” Cass observes as they step out.
Lulu inhales lungfuls of cold, clean air. Last time she was here she was so caught up in the strangeness of it that she couldn’t see details, but now smaller things come into focus: the spray of pink jasmine being trained to grow along The Hotel’s second story, and the soft rustle of its leaves and blooms in the night. She listens to their small sounds and breathes that blank winter air and feels something go loose across her chest.
The lobby is brightly lit, and from outside Lulu can see a reality TV show playing on a flat-screen installed on a wall. A piece of printer paper tacked underneath it reads WARNING: THESE PREMISES ARE BEING MONITORED BY CAMERAS. Aside from the TV and the sign, the room is mostly bare.
Ryan is alone inside. He’s pacing around, smoking a clove cigarette and looking broody. Lulu wishes Bea were here so that they could make fun of him for being such a pretentious hipster together.
Instead, Cass greets Ryan with a kiss on the cheek. He slings a proprietary arm around her shoulders. “Ryan, you remember Lulu,” Cass says. “And this is Owen.”
“Owen Lewis, right?” Ryan asks. “I know your dad.”
Lulu glances at Owen. He hates talking about his dad. They get along—they’re pretty close, actually—but people get kind of weird about it.
“He played my dad’s seventieth last year,” Ryan goes on. “He’s a cool guy.”
“Oh,” Owen says. “Yeah. I remember that party.” His dad’s band isn’t usually the type to do that kind of thing. Lulu wonders how much money Riggs Senior had to spend to get them to agree.
But it’s a good thing, maybe, because the dick-measuring tension that was in the air feels like it deflates, then disappears. They both have dads people sometimes get weird about; tonight, at least, no one is going to make it weird.
Ryan turns to Cass. “So what are we getting up to?” he asks.
“Aren’t you supposed to be hosting us?” she returns.
“Fuck, you’re right, I am!” Ryan laughs. He detaches himself from Cass and looks around the space, frowning at its emptiness. “Hope you weren’t expecting a cool party or anything.”
“Lulu’s been here before,” Cass reminds him.
“We just left a cool party,” Owen says. “Wasn’t that fun, turns out. So we’re definitely open to other ideas.”
* * *
Ryan takes them up to his room and instructs them to gather supplies: blankets and pillows and candles, plus a big canvas bag and a bottle of vodka. The space doesn’t look much more fully inhabited than last time Lulu was here. She wonders where Ryan actually lives.
She doesn’t ask, though, out of habit. She’s so used to pretending to know more than she does that she’s almost forgotten how to let someone know she’s curious. Plus, Ryan and Owen are deep in a conversation she doesn’t want to join or interrupt. Something about the Dodgers’ spring training prospects.
Instead, she grabs the bag—it’s annoyingly heavy—and drapes herself in a blanket. She follows Cass back down the stairs. “You guys do this often?” she asks.
“Sort of,” Cass says.
“Usually without two randos along for the ride?”
“The Hotel is always changing,” Cass explains. “A year ago it was too dangerous to go inside any of the buildings, and six months ago it wasn’t wired for electricity yet. We got running water last week.”
“The parking spaces,” Lulu says.
“What you can do with it changes,” Cass says. “Every week it’s a different adventure. A different project.”
Lulu thinks of sneaking around that house with Bea, taking their dumb, funny Flashes, making each other laugh. She thinks of the way they find fun together wherever they go, and she thinks she understands.
Lulu and Cass walk out past the cars and through a small gate to a flat stretch of patio, which surrounds a gigantic empty pool. Cass picks her way around the perimeter to the shallowest point and descends the steps there, her footfalls echoing as she heads toward the deep end. Watching her walk is surreal: Lulu can’t help imagining the water that’s supposed to surround her, and how quiet it would be as she disappeared underneath it.
She half expects the air to feel different on her skin when she follows.
It doesn’t, though. It’s a little darker with the building’s lights blocked by the pool’s rim, but otherwise the same. Cass takes the bag from Lulu and unzips it to reveal a bunch of poles and more canvas. “Can I . . . help?” Lulu asks. She has no idea what Cass is doing.
“Nah,” Cass says. “Ryan and I have a two-man tent setup pretty figured out.” She starts piling the poles up by size.
Lulu makes herself useful by taking a swig of vodka. Her buzz from earlier dissipated on the drive, and now she’s just feeling anxious. She tries to drown the butterflies in her stomach with booze.
“From the bottle,” Cass says. “Bold.”
“I can handle myself,” Lulu says.
“I can see that.”
Cass is still focused on the task at hand, but the clarity of her assessment—the same sharp certainty she used to put Owen in his place in the car—feels surprisingly familiar. It’s a distinct echo of the unapologetic, unadorned voice that has presided in the back of Lulu’s own head as long as she can remember. The one she always listens to, but never lets speak for her.
I like you, she thinks at Cass’s back, and then takes another swal
low.
The boys are carrying less, but they make more noise coming out through the parking lot and down into the pool. Ryan makes a big deal out of helping Cass with the tent. He stands behind her, accidentally-on-purpose pressing his body against hers, making a point of how small she is, and how neatly she fits against him.
Owen drifts over to Lulu and she hands him the bottle, wordless. Their fingers brush in the exchange and Lulu has a flash of the two of them a little over a year ago, at the beginning: sitting on someone’s couch, comparing the size of their hands. Owen’s palm was bigger, of course, and warm. He folded her hands into fists and wrapped his around them, fingers on the backs of her wrists. Lulu knew it was stupid to like that he made her feel small, and liked it anyway.
Now she says, “You and Ryan seem to be getting along.”
Owen makes a face about the burn of the vodka going down. “Like a house on fire,” he replies.
“Let’s hope not.”
The tent is standing now. Lulu has never been camping, not really, but a few years ago Deirdre had them glamp in yurts up near Big Sur, and that’s sort of what this looks like: round and white, although much smaller than those ones were. Lulu picks up one of the pillows at her feet and hands it off to Cass, who tosses it inside and reaches for more. As soon as she’s done with the cushioning, Ryan disappears inside, and Cass follows him. Lulu moves to do the same, but Owen grabs her sleeve.
“What are we doing here, Lu?” he asks.
Lulu doesn’t know how to explain that it’s been months and months since she felt comfortable with anyone besides Bea. That she hasn’t wanted to go anywhere since the Sloane Flash, but this is different—it isn’t exactly going out, even though it’s definitely not staying in.
Lulu used to be comfortable with Owen too. Always, without question. Maybe she still is: She finds herself telling him the truth, or at least part of it.